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Professor John Pilling

Having completed a PhD at University College London, Professor Emeritus John Pilling joined the University of Reading's Department of English Literature in 1971, and was appointed Professor of English and European Literature in 1993. He has supervised more than a dozen PhD and MPhil theses at the University of Reading, and occupied a variety of roles, including Joint Admissions Officer (1974-75); Deputy Admission Officer (1987-88); FUE Co-ordinator (1980-83); Departmental Representative at the Faculty of Letters Faculty Board (1982-85); Appraiser/Staff Development reviewer (1990-2003); Member of the Higher Degrees Committee, Faculty of Letters (1994-2000) and Member of the Joint Standing Committee of Council and Senate on the Arts (1994-). He was also the Director, and subsequently Co-Director of the Beckett International Foundation (1993-2003), and remains an advisor to its Trustee Board.

Professor Pilling was a Visiting Professor of English at the University of California, Santa Barbara (1984-85), where he interviewed Jorge Luis Borges, under the auspices of the Spanish and English departments, and he has been a guest lecturer at several English, German and Belgian Universities. He held several editorial roles on the Journal of Beckett Studies (1976-79) before becoming its chief editor from 1979 to 1985. He continues to be on the journal's advisory board, a role he also holds for Samuel Beckett Today / Aujourd'hui (2004 to present). He was also a contributing editor for Poetry Nation Review (1982-89). He has been joint supervisor and supervisor of three Oxford DPhil theses, and external examiner at a host of English Universities. He has been a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA) and was a founding fellow of the English Association (FEA), a member of the Literature Panel, Southern Arts (1982-85) and Deputy Editor of The Whiteknights Press (1983-93).

Media work has included interviews on aspects of Samuel Beckett's work, most recently on the Murphy manuscript notebooks for the Guardian and BBC Arts and Entertainments online (both 9 June 2014).

Professor Pilling's research specialism is broadly twentieth-century English and European Literature, though his main focus is on the work of Samuel Beckett. He has published several books and many articles on Beckett's work; most recently he edited (with Seán Lawlor) The Critical Edition of the Collected Poems of Samuel Beckett, which was published by Faber and Faber in 2012. He has recently completed work (with Andrew Nash) on A Facsimile and Transcription of Beckett's six holograph "Murphy" notebooks, with a critical commentary (Forthcoming).

Contents:Introduction; Part one 1929-1932: 'Dante...Bruno.Vico..Joyce and Assumption: "the prospect of self-extension" '; 'From a view to a kill: Proust and Le Concentrisme'; 'Dream of Fair to Middling Women: "a solution of continuity"; Part two 1932-1936: 'More Poems Than Precipitates: towards Echo's Bones and beyond'; 'In the Interval: More Pricks Than Kicks'; 'Beckett as Bookman: the reviews'; 'Figure and Ground : Murphy'; Part three 1937-1946: 'Dissonance: 1937-1940'; 'Watt and Watt not'; 'Texts for Something: "a universe become provisional" '; 'Mercier et Camier and the nouvelles: "the vicissitudes of the road" '; 'Conclusion'. Bibliography.

5. 'Shards of Ends and Odds in Prose: from Fizzles to The Lost Ones', in On Beckett:essays and criticism ed. S.E. Gontarski, Grove Press, 1986, pp. 169-190 (reprinted from Frescoes of the Skull: the later prose and drama of Samuel Beckett).

35. 'The "Hybrid Mix" of Ashbery's Three Poems, or, How not to be French', in: (ed.) Lionel Kelly, Poetry and the Sense of Panic: critical essays on Elizabeth Bishop and John Ashbery, Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000, pp. 119-126.

40. 'Absolute absence and the ghost(s) in the machine: on [Beckett's poem] "Malacoda" ', in: Mark Nixon and John Pilling (eds.), On In His Company/ Essays in Honour of James Knowlson OBE, Reading: Beckett International Foundation, 2014/15.

13. 'Beckett and "the itch to make": the early poems in English', SBTA, 8 ('Poetry and other prose'), 1999, pp.15-25.

14. ' "B" and "D" Revisited: a "dialogue" of a different kind', Journal of Beckett Studies, (n.s.) vol.20 no.2, 2011, 197-212 [includes the first reprint for almost 60 years of SB's little-known translation of Georges Duthuit's essay 'Sam Francis, Animator of Silence']

75. Child of Europe: a new anthology of East European poetry edited by Michael March; Enchanting Beasts: an anthology of modern woman poets of Finland edited by Kirsti Simonsuuri; Young Poets of a New Bulgaria edited by Belin Tonchev; Snow Leopard by Tua Forsström; The Garden: new and selected poetry and prose by Bella Akhmadulina, Poetry Nation Review, no.79, vol. 17, no.5, May/June, 1991, pp. 58-59.

136. Daniel Katz, Saying I No More : subjectivity and consciousness in the prose of Samuel Beckett; Alan Friedman, Beckett in Black and Red, Modern Language Review, vol. 95, no.4, October 2000, pp. 1075-1077.

148. Other Edens: the life and work of Brian Coffey, eds. Benjamin Keatinge and Aengus Woods, Journal of Beckett Studies (n.s.) 20 no.1, 2010, 293-297.

149. A. David Moody, Ezra Pound: Poet/a portrait of the man and his work (vol. 2: The EpicYears 1921-1939), Review of English Studies (forthcoming).

Miscellaneous

1. Introduction to The Group: an exhibition of poetry, The Library, University of Reading, 1974, 1-11; jointly written with Ian Fletcher; an exhibition jointly conceived and mounted by Ian Fletcher and myself.

24. Notes on Beckett's 1938 French poems (compulsorily withdrawn, copyright restrictions having been applied, from Collected Poems ofSamuel Beckett: a criticaledition, Faber), proofs set without the application of said restrictions, donated to and catalogued at the Beckett International Foundation, Special Collections, University of Reading.

25. 'In Gwynedd', Modern Poetry in Translation, [n.s.] no.3, 2014, 25; translated from the Russian original of Eugene Dubnov.

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